We all sit together to watch the final episode of the TV series. It’s the culmination of the season, and fitting because most of them are on the eve of graduating and leaving the idyllic surroundings of the supreme freedom and shelter of university curriculum. I’ve already graduated 6 months early, and am visiting the city again with my family. Everyone sits in comfortable recline, like a mass of puppies, tangled and contented, in various stages of undress or nightclothes. I’ve just come from my grandmothers house for a concert by the local band, which they - my friends- are refusing to attend. For me it’s an opportunity to catch up with a life I’m losing touch, an opportunity to pretend that nothing has changed and I’m as unconsciously part of the crowd as I used to be. For them its yet one more occasion to forcedly mingle with people they see everyday and would rather avoid in their free time. I bow to their will, when before I would have wheedled and cajoled and gotten my way. I would have started work on trying to convince Saima, who’s decision would rule her boyfriend Talha’s, and if the three of us decided to go then everyone else would just tag along because it had become a group activity. The others would grumble about “everyone wanting to go and forcing them along” but come nevertheless.
I don’t do that, because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to convince them, because they won’t care about what I want. I’ve been away for 5 months, and am no longer aware of the pulse of the group psyche, of how far I can go, of how much I can convince them to do.
I sit and watch the show, the last of the series that would ever air, and feel sick with nostalgia.
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